With the new year underway, more people are considering making a fresh start in another state. This new study shows the best and worst states to relocate to.
- Cardiff is revealed to be the 8th best city for a new start across the board.
- St Albans, Chester and Winchester rank 1st, 2nd and 3rd respectively.
- Cities are recommended based on metrics such as quality of life, crime rates, economic data, and social connectivity.
Every year, there are people looking to start fresh, to set up life in a new place where they can start over and establish their life. The beginning of a New Year often represents a chance for people to do just that, as seen by McDonald Property, who indicated a 45.1% increase in inquiries towards new homes in the first two weeks of January.
While there are a host of different motivations that can cause someone to move, the team at View Homes gathered the 6 most important metrics to rank the top and bottom states to move to this year.
How The Best States Were Ranked
“We chose to look at a host of attributes to measure when determining the best places for a fresh start in the UK,” says Liam Cope a real estate and relocation expert. “For a lot of people, economic freedom is one of the primary motivators, so we looked at the cost of living, job opportunities, and economic data. Other factors like crime rates, quality of life, and social connectivity make a big difference when choosing where to move to, so we included those.”
The Best States for a Fresh Start
Top 10 Cities for A Fresh New Start in 2025:
1. St Albans
2. Chester
3. Winchester
4. Dundee
5. Westminster
6. Aberdeen
7. Belfast
8. Cardiff
9. Worcester
10. Oxford
If you’d like to see the full data set please find it here.
– Ends –
If you use any research or quotes from this release, please credit View Homes. Thank you!
About Viewhomes:
The Viewhomes Team is a part of Nu-Vista Premiere Realty Inc., offering experienced and professional real estate advice to those looking to sell their homes.
Data Sources and Methodology:
- Cost of Living was sourced from the Travel Tables which is an estimated total monthly cost for one person includes expenses for food, groceries, transportation, mobile tariffs, and cinema tickets.
- Job Opportunities was sourced from LinkedIn. Job listings were collected by filtering results for each state to determine the total number of opportunities.
- Crime Rates we sourced from Numbeo’s Crime index.
- Quality of Life was sourced from the Quality of Life by State index. To determine quality of life in each state, sources evaluated each state across 51 indicators, ranging from housing costs and income growth to the education rate and quality of hospitals. These are grouped into five major categories: affordability, economy, education and health, quality of life, and safety. Higher score means a better quality of life.
- For Economic Data we used ONS media weekly earning data.
- Social Connectivity / Loneliness we used data from ONS. The dataset represents the percentage of people who feel “often” or “always” lonely, as reported in the Office for National Statistics’ Opinions and Lifestyle Survey.
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